While insisting that President Arroyo committed no crime to satisfy her appetite, Malacañang is willing to cooperate in any probe of the Office of the Ombudsman into her alleged lavish dinners in a recent visit in the United States.

Deputy Presidential Spokesman Anthony Golez said it was up to the Ombudsman to ferret out the truth behind the President’s supposed excessive display of wealth based on facts and evidence.

Apart from the dinner the President had in a French restaurant in New York City, Golez insisted that there was nothing wrong with her steak dinner in Washington DC, which he claimed, was hosted by Quezon Rep. Danilo Suarez. He said the President was merely invited to the dinner and found it impolite to ask how much Suarez paid for the restaurant tab.

A few days after the President’s $20,000 dinner at Le Cirque restaurant in New York City landed in New York Post gossip page, the Washington Post revealed another presidential feast amounting $15,000 at Bobby Van’s Steakhouse while on a trip to Washington DC.

“The controversy of the President’s wedding anniversary dinner in New York is now for the matter of the Ombudsman. This issue will be resolved based on facts and evidence and away from the character assassinations being launched by tabloid passing themselves off as broadsheets or rumormongers masquerading as news broadcasters,” Golez said in a news conference in the Palace.

He said the President’s “assassins” continue to spread “new poison” about the president’s dinners, accommodations, and transportation while visiting the United States from July 30 to August 3.

He bewailed that the President’s critics have went as far as demeaning and debasing the Office of the President and its occupant “in their frenzy to score media points at the President’s expense.”
”They would have now have us believe that leader of our nation is not good enough to be hosted in best hotels or chauffeured around town whenever he or she travels abroad as representative of the one of the 15 largest countries in the world,” he added.

Golez said the issue at hand could not be the sincerity of the President’s resolve to uplift the conditions of the poor. “Whatever monies may have been spent for the appropriately ceremonious conduct of her official trip abroad are but a tiny fraction of the billions of pesos she has committed, and will continue to commit, to the alleviation of hunger and the amelioration of poverty in our country,” he said.

Golez expressed hopes the President’s detractors would rise above their personal ambitions and respect the importance of the office Mrs. Arroyo occupies. “Against the evidence so far, we can only hope that the President’s critics will be able to rise above themselves,” he added.